


Some Say

by DontKillBugs



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: At least from their perspective, Body Horror, Different viewpoint, Fantastic Racism, Homeworld Gems - Freeform, Horror, POV Second Person, Specifically gems racist against humans, the telephone game, though no slurs are used
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:48:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24961801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DontKillBugs/pseuds/DontKillBugs
Summary: You hear stories, sometimes. Stories about the horror that brought down the Gempire. Stories of the Dreaded One, the Half-Breed, the Hybrid. A strange and grotesque amalgamation of organic and gem. The one who destroyed a Diamond just by coming into existence, and has brought the other three to their knees in fear of him.Universe, he calls himself.
Relationships: Connie Maheswaran & Steven Universe
Comments: 10
Kudos: 66





	Some Say

**Author's Note:**

> To clarify: This is NOT an evil Steven fic. This is the viewpoint of the last group of Homeworld loyalists, hiding on the edge of the galaxy, swapping tales of the one who brought down the mighty Gempire. Via the telephone game, things get... distorted.

You hear stories, sometimes.

Here, in this forgotten station in the farthest reaches of the galaxy, there’s a lot of time. Not much to do except wait.

Wait, and talk.

Gem Satellite 2Q2K-10. In a permanent orbit around a dim, dying star. Light years from Homeworld. The last safe place for those Gems who understand the true meaning of what it means to be a Gem, who understand the true Might And Glory Of The Eternal Gempire.

Though, you suppose, this station might as well be Homeworld now.

Sometimes, the others will talk. Talk of Revolution. Talk of taking back Homeworld. Talk of restarting the Kindergartens, getting the Injectors running again, building a new army.

It’s just talk. It’s always just talk. No Gem here is brave enough to try.

You hear stories sometimes.

Stories of how the Gempire shrinks more and more every day.

Stories of how once-proud Quartzes and Agates now mingle wantonly among ( _shudder)… organics._

And you hear other stories.

Stories of…

_Him._

There’s no need to clarify who. Every Gem on this station knows who He is.

The Half-Breed. The Hybrid. The Dreaded One. The one whose creation killed a Diamond. The one who has cowed the remaining Diamonds, _the Diamonds themselves_ , into submission.

Universe, he calls himself. A vainglorious, terrifying title.

You hear stories.

~/~/~

Some say his creation arose from a blasphemous act. That the traitor, Pink Diamond, partook in some strange ritual with… _an organic._

One of those strange, fleshy, soft creatures made from _meat._ Such a horror shouldn’t be possible. No gem. No stoneflesh, or chitin, or armor, or anything like that.

Just… _meat. Meat_ powered by _meat._

And Pink Diamond, the twice-damned traitor, she who forsake her Homeworld and perfect form, who disguised herself as a Quartz Soldier, had debased herself even further, by… _mating_ with an organic.

Some say that the Hybrid tore himself from her form, dissipating her with his very first act, before seizing her gem for his own.

A soft and fleshy organic, with a gem embedded in him… the very idea filled your mind with fear.

~/~/~

Some say he can warp the minds of Gems, and bind them to his will.

It must be true. How else could he have done it? How else could he have brought the Gempire to its knees, the very Diamonds at his beck and call?

Some say the Dreaded One can emit a… a fluid. Something strange and organic. That he uses it to fill in the cracks in cracked Gems, infecting them, twisting their wills, adding yet another soldier to his dominion.

Morganite ZX9-G7G can prove it. She says she once saw a Lapis Lazuli he had enslaved. Era One. A former member of the Crystal Gem army. Dissipated, cracked, sealed in a mirror for her crimes. Morganite says he took her mind, and sent her to Homeworld as bait, to draw more to his planet.

That was how it all began. How the great and radiant Gempire began to come crashing down.

That Lapis Lazuli now lives in his home colony. An Era One Lapis, capable of lifting entire oceans away from planets, tamed and made the arm of a tyrant.

~/~/~

Some say more fell to his control. His knights, ready to strike at a moment’s notice.

A Peridot, a poor and lowly maintenance tech who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, stripped of her limb enhancers and made to scream his praises. Her broken mind haplessly assembling junk and spare parts into strange sculptures, surely trying to make sense of it all.

A Bismuth, once a constructor of beautiful Gem structures. Now, a outpouring of swords, and axes, and every edged weapon you could think of. Overwhelming a Gem’s natural gem-sourced weapon by sheer quantity of slices.

An illegal cross-Gem Fusion. That greatest of blasphemies, rejecting the Diamond’s flawless design for your own mish-mashed creation. Some say that it calls itself a Garnet. That it is massive, blocky and shambling, a pair of mighty fists raised in judgement.

An Amethyst, sealed in her Kindergarten for too long, far too long, emerging from the dirt as a horrifying beast, constantly sliding between forms, unable to gain a proper shape. The Half-Breed had besmirched her form, turned her into a joke.

The Renegade Pearl herself, the beast of Rose Quartz’s army. Once the terror of the battlefield, dissipating Quartz soldiers left and right, in the name of Rose Quartz and her pet organics. Now the ruthless trainer of more soldiers for the Dreaded One.

And worst of all…

Some say that Jasper, THE Jasper, the Beta Kindergarten Quartz That Could… Jasper, who had held the line longer and harder than anyone during the Gem War… who had restarted the fight against the Crystal Gems on the ground, capturing the Hybrid’s hideous, corrupted Gems for her own army… who had lain in wait, just outside of his colony, ready for the moment to strike…

Some say she finally launched an attack, and was shattered effortlessly. A horrifying thought on its own, only to become far worse. Some say he re-bound her Gem together, and only then did she finally yield. Now she swears loyalty to him, the Once-Pride Of Homeworld, now another notch in his army.

You shudder. Perhaps its just the coldness of this station.

Perhaps not.

~/~/~

Some say that he has even infected the Diamonds. That they have abdicated their rightful thrones in his name.

Some say that Yellow Diamond, the mighty executioner, now spends her days slowly assembling shattered Gems back together. For what purpose, none on the station can say. A penance? A horrifying experiment? Who knows?

Some say that Blue Diamond, your Diamond from back in the day, now assists the Dreaded One in his infection of other Gems. That her presence is filled with a gas that corrodes the minds of Gems into blissful, mindless subservience.

Some, just a few, say that White Diamond, her perfect radiance herself, is now so broken by the Dreaded One that she allows other Gems to take control of her, mind and body. That she willingly makes a mockery of her former glory.

Such a travesty barely bears thinking about.

~/~/~

Some say the Diamonds saw it coming, all those years ago, during the first Gem War. They must have, in their infinite glory and wisdom.

Some say they took precautions. A contingency plan, to avert the rise of the Hybrid.

Amber D3K4-9939 can attest to that one. She worked on it, after all.

Under Yellow Diamond, Amber and her fellow Ambers created… an abomination. A monstrosity upon Gemkind. She still trembles when she remembers it, when she thinks no one sees. She bites back the screams over what she’s done. You comfort her the best you can.

She says that she, at the behest of the Diamonds, helped design and create a Geoweapon. The shattered shards of a million million Gems, forced together into a single, screaming hivemind the size of a small planet.

The Cluster, they called the thing.

She says the Diamonds sealed it deep in the organic planet’s core. That they left it there, to grow and mature and eventually tear open the planet, to prevent the rise of the Hybrid.

It obeys him, now.

The perfect Geoweapon, sin of Homeworld’s sin, now sleeps silently in the bowels of the Earth, ready to obey his orders. It emerged from the Earth and fought Yellow Diamond’s warship, smashing it almost beyond repair.

~/~/~

Some say he shapeshifts. That alone isn’t unusual, any Gem can do that.

What’s unnerving is _how_ he shapeshifts.

He does it… _slowly._

It’s gradual. Slow enough that you wouldn’t notice it unless you had seen him at different times.

Three years ago, when he first brought the Diamonds to heel, he was small. Just a few feet tall.

Now, his power fully consolidated? He’s taller. Almost double his previous size.

Why? Why would he shift so slowly?

And what is he becoming?

Some say it’s because he’s saving his energy. That his final form will be so grotesque, so alien, so… _organic_ , that he has to do it slowly.

You don’t believe it. You don’t _want_ to believe it. Such things can’t possibly be true.

~/~/~

Some say that he lives in a colony on his planet. A hybrid colony, just like him. Half-Gem, half organic.

Two species, intermingling freely, ready to leap to attack anything he points to.

Some say the Half-Breed has a school there, where who knows what kind of horrors happen, conditioning Gems to throw aside their former pride, to debase themselves to his level.

Tanzanite 3175-3701 used to live there. She says she barely escaped. She went there to attempt to infiltrate the place from the inside. You admire her a little for that. Heroic, if misguided.

She says she fled for her life after she watched, halfway across the colony, as the Dreaded One grew into an enormous, pink abomination, roaring at the sky. She says it took all three Diamonds, and the Cluster, to restrain him. After which, they immediately went back to their new positions, as if nothing had happened.

One of the Quartzes on this station slugs Tanzanite in the arm when she tells that part. “Be serious,” the Quartz growls. The others laugh it off nervously.

You pity Tanzanite, just a little. The fear and dread of living in that place must have surely made her mind crack, just a little.

Surely that part can’t be true, you think. Surely not even the Dreaded One can transform like that.

Still, you wonder sometimes.

~/~/~

Some say that he can not only warp and control Gems, but Organics as well.

This one was pieced together from multiple stories. Enough witnesses have corroborated this one that it must be true.

The facts are these:

Aquamarine 11A-AA1, Blue Diamond’s top field operative, led a mission to the organic planet to collect samples of the beings living there. Her mission, technically a failure, ended with her return to Homeworld with the Half-Breed, and a human.

A “Lars”, she called it. A skinny, weak, cowardly thing that whined and begged and ran and hid. Barely worth the energy it took to describe it.

After arriving at Homeworld, the Dreaded One escaped the Diamonds by stealing Blue Diamond’s own Palanquin, and disappearing into the depths of Homeworld with the Lars.

Months later, the Lars resurfaces.

Fleet Commander Emerald herself tells you this story during one of her more lucid days. Emerald, former decorated general of the Homeworld Space Battalion, now a twitching, nervous wreck, stripped of her command, her army, her ships.

Emerald says the Lars, leading a hideous group of Off-Colors, had stolen her prize ship, the _Sun Incinerator,_ and led her on a taunting chase throughout the galaxy.

The Lars had changed in the time since Aquamarine had seen it, but it was still definitely him.

Now, the Lars was confident. Daring. Cocky, even, with a fierce loyalty to the Dreaded One.

And, far more concerning, its organic flesh was now the Dreaded One’s signature pink color.

Mind control, surely. The Half-Breed’s infection, surely.

Now this brainwashed organic tools around the galaxy in one of Homeworld’s finest ships, manned by a crew of shambling, mismatched freaks.

 _“The horror,”_ Emerald mumbles as she rocks back and forth. “ _The horror.”_

~/~/~

Some say that the Dreaded One has a companion.

Another organic. A “Connie”, as Aquamarine called her. A stupid, nonsense word that only an organic could come up with.

This Connie is the Hybrid’s closest companion, his protector, his partner. She isn’t even pink, like the brainwashed Lars, so she clearly walks alongside him so fiercely of her own free will.

What horrific deeds must this organic knight have committed to gain the Dreaded One’s respect? How many shattered fragments must be on her hands? How many Homeworld warriors slain with her sword, sharpened down to an atom point, which she wields as she rides atop the back of a mighty organic beast?

Some even say, growing pale with the mere thought of it, that the Dreaded One regularly commits the ultimate taboo with this organic.

The two of them, with terrifying regularity… _fuse._

The ultimate besmirching of the perfection given by the Diamonds! The mad, reckless combination of those that should never be combined! And the Hybrid does it so freely, so quickly with his knight!

None have seen the resulting creation and lived to tell the tale. Some say the fusion must be enormous, with sharp, hungry teeth and ripping claws. Some say it must be ephemeral, like a virus or a fog, seeping through cracks and consuming all. And some say it must be indescribable, the sort of horror that would drive a Gem to madness just to look upon it.

You shudder again, and clutch your hand over your Gem.

~/~/~

And some…

Some say that there is a Gem.

One that will rise up, and lead the truly faithful against the Hybrid.

Many have seen her. She walks among the colony, blending in perfectly amongst the ones there.

A Pearl.

Pink, with a single eye, her other side cracked and wounded.

Pearls are known to go renegade. It happened more and more frequently since the first Gem War. Some say it’s in their nature to rebel, to sweet-talk and pretend until they get close enough to their master to slid a knife into their Gem.

Some say that this Pearl used to be White Diamond’s very own Pearl. That the Half-Breed tried to infect her, like so many other Gems, to serve in his dominion. Hence why she is pink, instead of white and grey now.

Except…

Except that he got sloppy. Got lazy.

Some say that this Pearl wasn’t fully turned. You can see it clearly in her face, the remaining cracks unfilled, proving that he hasn’t fully changed her.

Some say that this Pearl, the last Pearl truly loyal to Homeworld, is lying in wait. Playing the longest game in the history of the Gempire. Waiting until the Dreaded One’s guard is truly down… and then?

And then, revolution. Victory. The reestablishment of Homeworld, the liberation of the Diamonds, the reemergence of the Gempire.

All from a single Pearl, just like in the Gem War. One Pearl ended Era One, and this Pearl will end Era Three.

The irony is delicious, you think to yourself.

Such thoughts give you hope, as you wait in this floating can, at the farthest reaches of the galaxy.

Waiting.


End file.
